Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy
Success depends on IT initiatives clearly aligned to business goals, IT excellence, and driving technology innovation.
IT strategies are often nonexistent or ineffective:
- 74.6% of organizations have an IT strategy process they feel is ineffective.
- IT does not do a good job of communicating its support for business goals; therefore, 23.6% of CXOs still feel that their goals are unsupported by IT.
IT departments that have not developed IT strategies experience alignment, organization, and prioritization issues.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- A CIO has three roles: enable business productivity, run an effective IT shop, and drive technology innovation. Your key initiative plan must reflect these three mandates and how IT strives to fulfill them.
- Don’t project your vision three to five years into the future. Dive deep on next year’s big-ticket items instead.
- Developing an IT strategy is a wasted effort if no mechanisms are put in place to govern the journey.
- If you don’t communicate it, it doesn’t exist; simple, appealing, and inspirational communication is needed.
Impact and Result
- Establish the scope of your IT strategy by defining IT’s mission and vision statements and guiding principles.
- Perform a retrospective of IT’s performance to recognize the current state while highlighting important strategic elements to address going forward.
- Elicit the business context and identify strategic initiatives that are most important to the organization while building a plan to execute on it.
- Evaluate the foundational elements of IT’s operational strategy that will be required to successfully execute on key initiatives.
- Wrap all strategic information into a highly visual and compelling presentation that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.
Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy
Start here – read the Executive Brief
Read our concise Executive Brief to find out why you should create a visual IT strategy, review Info-Tech’s methodology, and understand the four ways we can support you in completing this project.
1. Establish the scope of your IT strategy
Build your IT mission and vision statements, elicit IT guiding principles, and determine the scope of your IT strategy.
2. Review performance from last fiscal year
Determine the business value from previous strategies, analyze diagnostic data to review IT’s performance over the last fiscal year, and elicit other important data to communicate IT’s success over the last fiscal year.
3. Build your key initiative plan
Elicit business context from the CIO and the IT team, identify your key initiatives and build their profiles, and construct your strategy roadmap.
4. Define your operational strategy
Establish governance, evaluate budget and organizational changes, build functional support roadmaps, and finalize your IT strategy.
Member Testimonials
After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.
9.3/10
Overall Impact
$99,297
Average $ Saved
34
Average Days Saved
Client
Experience
Impact
$ Saved
Days Saved
Metroplus Health Plan, Inc.
Workshop
10/10
$6,197
20
Affiliated Distributors, Inc
Guided Implementation
1/10
N/A
N/A
Government of the United States Virgin Islands
Workshop
10/10
$12,395
29
Plumbing Distributors
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
90
Choice Properties Limited Partnership
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
50
County of Napa
Workshop
10/10
$37,187
14
Government of Bermuda
Workshop
10/10
$200K
20
Colonial Savings, F.A.
Guided Implementation
9/10
N/A
50
DD Traders, Inc.
Guided Implementation
10/10
$61,979
50
Simnet
Guided Implementation
10/10
$100K
110
Department of Housing & Community Development
Workshop
9/10
$61,979
65
March Networks Corporate
Guided Implementation
9/10
$50,000
14
City Of Waterloo
Workshop
10/10
$50,000
20
LSU Health Sciences Center
Guided Implementation
10/10
$37,187
75
Virginia Community College System
Workshop
10/10
$37,187
115
California Department of General Services
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
10
University Of Regina
Workshop
9/10
$16,000
10
ReCor Medical
Guided Implementation
10/10
N/A
N/A
Granite State Management & Resources
Workshop
10/10
$10,000
44
University of Maribor
Guided Implementation
9/10
$3,000
5
American Realty Advisors
Guided Implementation
8/10
$12,395
10
Dar Al Handasah Consultants Shair & Partners Holdings Ltd.
Guided Implementation
9/10
$61,979
20
Kentucky Public Pensions Authority
Workshop
9/10
N/A
10
Randolph Brooks Federal Credit Union
Workshop
9/10
$12,395
5
Central University of Technology
Workshop
10/10
N/A
75
Prince George's Community College
Guided Implementation
10/10
$12,395
9
Penn State Health
Workshop
10/10
$900K
65
IT Assist
Guided Implementation
9/10
$3,000
10
College of DuPage
Workshop
9/10
$49,583
32
District Of Thunder Bay Social Services Administration Board,The
Guided Implementation
9/10
$6,000
47
IT Strategy
Note: Updated Academy content is coming soon
Develop a data-driven, fit-for-purpose plan with a strong link to execution.
This course makes up part of the Strategy & Governance Certificate.
- Course Modules: 4
- Estimated Completion Time: 2-3 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- Andy Liu, Associate Executive Advisor
- David Glazer, Practice Lead, CIO Practice
Onsite Workshop: Build a Business-Aligned IT Strategy
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Pre-Workshop: Elicit Business Context
The Purpose
Conduct analysis and facilitate discussions to uncover what business needs mean for IT and how IT plans to support the business.
Key Benefits Achieved
An understanding of what business needs mean for IT, the business strategy, and a clear alignment between the two.
Activities
Outputs
Identify business context and business goals.
- Business Context and Business Goals
Customize your organization’s capability map.
- Customized Capability Map
(Optional) Compile and prioritize IT success stories.
Module 2: Establish Scope and Review IT Performance
The Purpose
Define statements, principles, and goals to establish the scope of your IT strategy and assess IT’s past performance.
Key Benefits Achieved
Identify and document the scope of your IT strategy and the successes from IT’s past performance (business value realized, key milestones and successful projects, etc.).
Activities
Outputs
Create the IT vision statement, IT mission statement, and identify IT guiding principles.
- IT Vision Statement
- IT Mission Statement
Define the IT strategy scope.
- IT Guiding Principles and Scope
Determine business value realized from the last fiscal year.
- Business Value Realized
Evaluate diagnostic data and evaluate IT performance.
Module 3: Build Your Key Initiative Plan
The Purpose
Identify high-priority key initiatives to support the business, enable IT excellence, and drive technology innovation.
Key Benefits Achieved
Build your key initiative plan along with your goals cascade visual to clearly communicate business alignment back to your key initiatives.
Activities
Outputs
Determine goals cascade from business goals to IT goals, including required IT capabilities, IT initiatives, and IT goals.
- List of IT Initiatives
- Goals Cascade
Module 4: Build Your Key Initiative Plan (Continued)
The Purpose
Identify high-priority key initiatives to support the business, enable IT excellence, and drive technology innovation.
Key Benefits Achieved
Build your key initiative plan along with your goals cascade visual to clearly communicate business alignment back to your key initiatives.
Activities
Outputs
Prioritize your IT initiatives.
- IT Initiative One-Pagers (Sample)
Build your roadmap.
- IT Roadmap
Develop business-focused sunshine diagram.
Module 5: Define Your Operational Strategy
The Purpose
Evaluate the key components on an operational strategy that will help your team execute on your key strategic initiatives.
Key Benefits Achieved
Build a strong operational strategy to ensure IT can deliver what they promise and put in place the mechanisms to govern your journey.
Activities
Outputs
Identify metrics and targets per IT goal.
- IT Metrics and Targets
Establish stakeholder communication approach.
- Stakeholder Communication Plan
Identify organizational changes required.
- IT Resourcing Changes
Identify IT’s target budget.
Module 6: Next Steps and Wrap-Up
The Purpose
Complete your strategy by building a highly visual and compelling presentation that enables easy customization and executive-facing content.
Key Benefits Achieved
Simple, appealing, and inspirational communication of your strategy to all key stakeholders is a must to ensure IT’s success.
Activities
Outputs
Discuss next steps and wrap-up.
- IT Strategy Presentation
Complete in-progress deliverables from previous four days.
Set up review time for workshop deliverables.
About Info-Tech
Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.
We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.
What Is a Blueprint?
A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.
Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.
Need Extra Help?
Try Our Guided Implementations
Get the help you need in this 5-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.
Guided Implementation #1 - Pre-Project Call
- Call #1 - Discuss business context and customize your organization’s capability map.
Guided Implementation #2 - Establish the scope of your IT strategy
- Call #1 - Identify mission and vision statements and guiding principles to discuss strategy scope.
Guided Implementation #3 - Review performance from last fiscal year
- Call #1 - Assess year-in-review data and evaluate performance.
- Call #2 - Discuss diagnostic data results and success stories.
Guided Implementation #4 - Build your key initiative plan
- Call #1 - Identify strategic initiatives and required information.
- Call #2 - Discuss how to build your roadmap.
Guided Implementation #5 - Define your operational strategy
- Call #1 - Discuss and identify appropriate operational strategy components.
- Call #2 - Summarize results and plan next steps.
Contributors
- Luis Ramón Ramos Espinoza, Chief Information Officer, Suramericana
- Kyle Saverance, Chief Information Officer, Coker College
- Scott Ross, SVP Omni-Channel Technologies, Lowe’s Companies
- Max Min, Director, Waterloo City Centre
- Philip D’Aurelio, Development Solutions Supervisor, City of Hamilton
- Michael Dieckmann, Chief Operating Offier, Florida Virtual Campus
- Joe Evers, Consulting Principal, JcEvers Consulting Corporation
- Ken Piddington, Chief Information Officer, MRE Consulting
- 2 anonymous contributors